Displaying posts categorized under

POLITICS

It’s Not Socialism, It’s Racism The myth of the media’s new Socialist It Girl. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270614/its-not-socialism-its-racism-daniel-greenfield

After the ’10 census, New York lost two congressional seats. Overpriced, lacking any growth industries except tourism and community organizing, the state just couldn’t keep up with the rest of the country.

New York had been bleeding congressional seats since the rise of the suburbs. After the massacre of ’10, its congressional delegation was the smallest since 1823. And it’ll lose more seats after the next census.

But the ’10 massacre also forced Rep. Joe Crowley out of the 7th Congressional District and into the 14th. The 7th became a gerrymandered a district built like a Frankenstein’s monster out of parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens that had nothing geographically in common except Puerto Rican populations who will keep voting for Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat, until the city sinks beneath the waves.

Crowley, who is paler than birch trees, had no shot at the new 7th. But he settled down comfortably in the 14th, winning 70% of the vote by just showing up, without the fuss of a primary challenge. While representing a Hispanic district in Queens, he was allegedly living comfortably in Arlington, Virginia.

That was never going to last.

New York City’s working class white population is an endangered species. If you’re not on welfare or earning well in the six figures, you can’t afford to live there. Crowley’s district was 46% Hispanic. It had the second highest share of Latino voters in New York. The machine pol was living on borrowed time.

The Democratic Party Is Killing Itself By Ian Henderson

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/02/the-democratic-party-is-killing-itsel

What does America’s political climate bode for us in the next 25-50 years? What if I told you the Democratic Party will fracture into multiple parties and the Republican Party will grow stronger? And what if I said changing demographics and the normalization of identity politics would be the reason?

The Democratic Party has redoubled its embrace of identity politics. Whether it be Mexican-American, African-American, Chinese-American, Muslim-American or any of the two-dozen hyphenated American groups out there, these ethno-religious-cultural groups have by and large used the Democratic Party to further their group interests. Why wouldn’t they? Human beings are tribal creatures and more often than not flock to those who act like them, speak like them, pray like them, and, yes, look like them.

As America’s non-Hispanic White population shrinks due to the influx of non-European immigration and low white birth rates, cultural enclaves have begun to form all over the nation. Starting in the late 1960s and accelerating over the past decade, the Democratic Party has abandoned its traditional base of working-class white voters to embrace minority immigrant groups. Although this has boded well for them in places like California, it won’t last.

Growing Republican Support

Working-class white voters feel abandoned by the Democratic Party. The party went from a platform of being center-left economically and socially/culturally conservative to a platform that is far to the left economically and socially/culturally degenerate. Consider how the South went from blue to red in the 1990s, as Southern Evangelicals embraced the Republican Party platform.

Trump is Winning Over Blacks, Hispanics, Millennials, and Even Gays By Karin McQuillan

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/trump_is_winning_over_blacks_hispanics_millennials_and_even_gays.html

Democrat hate speech targeting deplorables has always worked — on their own voters. Libeling Republicans as racist, homophobic morons has kept Democrat voters in line. President Trump laughs at their insults, and just gets stronger. Suddenly, one more Trump success. The Democrat line is breaking. Our minorities are breaking free.

President Trump’s off the charts achievements on jobs and security are improving the lives of every single Democrat identity voting bloc. A small, but increasingly significant number are noticing. With his MAGA gains on the economy and foreign affairs, President Trump is slowly chipping away at the Democrat Party’s foundations. The white working class already belongs to Trump. Fed up blacks, Hispanics, millennials and gays are starting to follow.

Ordinary people, including our minorities, are focused on the reality of their lives. Most Americans actually care about exactly the two big issues Trump cares about: jobs and personal safety. They notice more money in their paychecks. They notice when they get off food stamps and the unemployment line. They notice when they move from flipping hamburgers to a high-paying construction or assembly-line jobs. Securing our border, supporting cops, defeating ISIS in Syria, pressuring North Korea to “denuke” — ordinary people get that we are safer than we were under Obama. Democrats can scream as loud as they want, but they cannot drown out reality.

Convinced she’s Churchill, Hillary Clinton is ready for her comeback By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/convinced_shes_churchill_hillary_clinton_is_ready_for_her_comeback.html

Hillary Clinton is convinced she’s Winston Churchill.

Get a load of what her adoring media say, from Front Page Magazine, quoting the Guardian:

Hillary Clinton, in an interview with a British newspaper this week, appeared to compare herself to wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill while responding to a question about being a polarizing figure.

“I’m sure they said that about Churchill between the wars, didn’t they?” she told The Guardian when asked if she should withdraw from public life to help heal divisions in the U.S., given her reputation.

What a pathetic picture: a washed up presidential candidate who was convinced she had it in the bag and who up until now has been otherwise blaming everyone but herself for it (as President Trump has noticed), now delving into the history books in search of delusions of grandeur. “Between the wars”? Like, out in the political wilderness, you know, before the big comeback?

For a while there, the séances were all about channeling Eleanor Roosevelt (why didn’t that ever become a campaign issue?), but now, it looks as though she’s moved on, moved to a bigger league, moved to channel Churchill. Must be some séances…

It must make sense from her point of view. Aren’t President Trump’s “deplorables” really just Nazis? That’s the word from the denizens of the left. So of course they are, too, in her leftist mind…Nazis, Churchill…it all clicks together.

Beyond Churchill himself, there’s also the Churchill narrative, and there it must make even more sense. Churchill warned about Nazis, got thrown out of power, and then the U.K. ended up with Neville Chamberlain, who tried to cut deals with Hitler at Munich. The result of that mess was that the U.K. went right back and brought him in again.

The Democrats Are Done Pretending to Be Moderate By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/democrats-done-pretending-to-be-moderate/They think they’re unpopular because they aren’t left-wing enough.

The Democratic love of socialism was for many years the love that dared not speak its name. No more. Now the party is figuratively jumping on Oprah’s couch shouting its love of socialism. You’d have to plug your ears not to hear it.

Socialist Bernie Sanders is unquestionably the spiritual leader of the Democratic party, which is radicalizing itself in his image, and on the strength of her blowout Democratic-primary win over liberal incumbent Joe Crowley in the party-ruled NY-14 congressional district, soon-to-be-congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now one of the most prominent faces in the Democratic party. A poll last fall put support for socialism at 44 percent among Millennials, and even more disturbingly, 23 percent of this group agreed that Joseph Stalin is a “hero.” Socialized medicine, i.e., Medicare for all, is the hottest issue on the Left (unless you count hating Trump as an “issue”).

In short, Democrats are who we thought they were. They’re just losing their inhibitions about it. As the woke-youth site Vox puts it, “Maybe Democrats should stop being afraid of the left” because “Ocasio-Cortez’s victory is a big sign that Democrats can run on socialist ideas and win.” Talk of revolution flows naturally. After Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said, “I tell you, the Democratic base is wired now for a revolt.”

It’s become a cliché to compare Washington politics to Wag the Dog (1997) or Idiocracy (2006), perhaps the two most-cited political movies of this era. A forgotten political film from the 1990s, though, deserves more attention for its prescience: Warren Beatty’s Bulworth, which appeared in theaters 20 years ago this spring. (Spoilers follow. The movie is streaming on the Starz pay-TV service.)

The Success of Socialist Candidates Would Mean a Return to Poverty and Tyranny By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/socialists-like-ben-jealous-and-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-would-bring-back-the-dark-ages/
“Ben Jealous and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t really “progressives.” Their big government platform is actually quite regressive. ”

On Tuesday, two veterans of the 2016 campaign launched by self-identified socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won important upsets in Democratic primaries. Sanders himself congratulated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and former NAACP Chair Ben Jealous, who each defeated rivals endorsed by the Democratic Party. Their victories have been hailed as “progressive,” but the socialist ideology they pursue is truly regressive, and would resurrect the age-old tragedy of a pre-free market command economy with fewer options and more poverty.

Sanders declared that Jealous’ victory “showed that running a progressive, issue-oriented campaign can bring all working people together in the fight for justice.”

What issues does Sanders consider “progressive”? An ever-increasing government control of the economy, heavy on redistributing wealth. But don’t take my word for it — examine Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign platform. Here it is, complete with some snarky explanations courtesy of America Rising.

Ocasio-Cortez promises “Medicare For All,” the standard Sanders approach to health care, “free” public universities and trade schools, guaranteed jobs for everyone, a 100 percent renewable “infrastructure overhaul,” and guaranteed housing. How would she pay for all this largess? “Taxing Wall Street.”

Riiiight. Even if you confiscated every single dollar in the stock exchange, that would not come close to covering the cost of all these programs. In the process, you would be killing the engine of growth that enables jobs, goods, and services to exist in the free market in the first place.

In short, full implementation of this plan is not only economically infeasible, it would derail America’s wealth-creating machine, bringing back a poverty and injustice all too familiar in human history. CONTINUE AT SITE

Democrats’ Competing Midterm Messages on the Economy by Adele Malpass

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/
As the midterm election season heats up, a mixed economic message is coming from Democratic congressional candidates as the progressive wing finds itself at odds with party moderates. Partly, this is a reflection of the difficulty the out-of-power party has getting traction during robust economic times. The 2018 midterms are taking place at a time when the unemployment rate is at its lowest point in 18 years. But this dichotomy is also indicative of the Democratic Party’s leftward movement. The moderate wing is in shock after 10-term New York Congressman Joe Crowley lost a primary battle Tuesday to Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old underfunded outsider candidate to the left of “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders.

Progressives have absorbed the Sanders playbook and are campaigning on platforms advocating free college tuition, free single-payer health care, and a jobs guarantee program for all. This is on top of calls for a $15 minimum wage and a new affordable housing mandate to address income and wealth inequality. They insist that this all can be done by taxing Wall Street, millionaires and rolling back the recent Republican tax cuts.

They will get a chance to test their liberal economic message in one of the most watched midterm races, a congressional election in Orange County, California, where Mimi Walters is the two-term Republican incumbent. This is an upscale swing voter district that Hillary Clinton won by five percentage points. Democrats have identified it as a key district to flip in their quest to retake the House. Facing Walters in the November general election is Katie Porter, a Democrat who finished a distant second to Walters in California’s “top-two” primary system.

Porter, a university professor and a protégé of Elizabeth Warren’s from her Harvard days, has been dubbed the “Elizabeth Warren of the West.” She has endorsed Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” proposal, touts Nancy Pelosi’s plan to roll back the recently passed tax cuts, and insists that wealthy corporations “pay their fair share.”

However, her close association with Warren, which includes a fundraiser headlined by the Massachusetts liberal and numerous photos with her, are viewed as a vulnerability by some Republicans. “Katie Porter is out of touch with this district as a far-left progressive,” said Courtney Alexander, communications director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with the Republican House leadership. “Going into the fall, she will be a sharp contrast to the Republican message of less taxes.”

Racial Gerrymanders Rebuked The Supreme Court calls foul on a voting-rights gambit in Texas.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/racial-gerrymanders-rebuked-1529968160

Liberals have weaponized the Voting Rights Act and sometimes found support from a conflicted Supreme Court. But a 5-4 majority on Monday pushed back hard against the left’s gambit in Texas to use the law to racially gerrymander legislative districts.

At issue in Abbott v. Perez were the state legislature’s 2013 Congressional and state House maps. After liberal groups sued to block the legislature’s 2011 redistricting plans, the Supreme Court ordered a lower court to redraw the maps for the 2012 election. The legislature then adopted the lower court’s maps with a few nips and tucks.

But lo, liberal plaintiffs contended the new maps were still “tainted” by bias, and a three-judge panel last summer gave the state what amounted to an ultimatum: Redo the maps or we will. Texas sought relief from the High Court, which showed sympathy to most of the state’s claims.

Writing for the majority, Samuel Alito explains that the Court has held that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act commands states to provide minorities equal opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. But the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment also “forbids ‘racial gerrymandering,’” and prohibits “intentional ‘vote dilution.’” In other words, legislatures must consider race, but not too much.

#WalkAway Campaign Urges Fed-Up Democrats to Leave the Party By Debra Heine

https://pjmedia.com/trending/walkaway-campaign-urges-fed-up-democrats-to-leave-the-party/

A new grassroots movement is urging Democrats who are fed up with the ugly direction the party has taken in recent years — especially since President Trump was elected — to “walk away.” The #WalkAway campaign is “dedicated to sharing the stories of people who can no longer accept the current ideology of liberalism and what the Democratic Party has become,” the group’s Facebook page states.

Some left long ago. Many of us have recently been “red-pilled”. Some here have wanted to leave for some time, but have feared the consequences they might suffer from friends or family if they walk away.

This group is here to encourage and support those on the left to walk away from the divisive tenets by allowing people to share their stories, or watch the video testimonies and read the posts of others who have walked away.

Brandon Straka aka “The Unsilent Majority” kicked off the campaign with a video on May 26.

“It is my sincere hope that you will join me in this campaign and that we may start a movement in this country — which not only encourages others to walk away from the divisive left, but also takes back the narrative from the liberal media about what it means to be a conservative in America,” Straka says in the video.

It is up to all of us to make our voices heard and reclaim the truth. The Democratic Party has taken for granted that it owns racial, sexual, and religious minorities in America. It has encouraged groupthink, hypocrisy, division, stereotyping, resentment, and the acceptance of victimhood mentality. And all the while, they have discouraged minorities from having independent thought, open dialogue, measured and informed opinion, and a motivation to succeed.

“For years now, I have watched as the left has devolved into intolerance, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded, and at times blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric,” Straka says in the video below.

The video has 1,156,248 views on Facebook and over 61,000 views on YouTube. The #WalkAway Facebook page has over 20,000 likes and over 6,000 members.

Straka, a gay man from Nebraska, says that he is one of the liberals who melted down in November of 2016 after Trump was elected. “It’s funny now, but at the time it was completely tragic,” he told conservative podcaster David J. Harris in a recent interview. “I was heartbeat away from being that ‘Leave Britney alone!’ guy … just crying hysterically,” he said. Straka told Harris that a string of emotional videos he made after the election are still up on his Facebook page. He said the reason he was so devastated was because he believed all of the media lies about Trump being a “racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, sexual predator.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Races to watch in Tuesday’s primaries By Reid Wilson

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/393676-races-to-watch-in-tuesdays-primaries

Voters in six states — Colorado, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah — head to the polls Tuesday to pick nominees in critical races ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Leading contenders include two African-American candidates fighting to become Maryland’s next governor, the first openly gay man with a strong shot at a governorship and a former presidential nominee who’s likely to claim a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Here are the key races to watch as results roll in:

Romney will finally beat Kennedy

Twenty-four years ago, Mitt Romney began his political career by mounting a surprisingly strong challenge to then-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Romney came up short, but his first race put him on a path that led to the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Now, running to replace retiring Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Romney is likely to exact a small measure of revenge against a Kennedy — though not one who’s related to the Massachusetts clan. A poll conducted last week showed Romney leading state Rep. Mike Kennedy (R) 65 percent to 23 percent.

Romney is all but certain to skate to the Senate in November. He will face Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson (D). Utah has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Frank Moss won reelection in 1970. Hatch beat Moss six years later.

Big races in the Big Apple

New York voters will pick party nominees in federal races Tuesday, though they have to wait until September to nominate candidates for statewide office.

Four incumbents face credible threats in their home districts, led by Rep. Dan Donovan (R), whose predecessor, ex-Rep. Michael Grimm (R), is mounting a comeback bid. Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Joseph Crowley and Eliot Engel are under pressure too, though all three remain the heavy favorites in their New York City-based seats.

Democrats see opportunities this year to capture at least four upstate districts held by Republicans, especially if a blue wave begins to develop. The party faces competitive primaries in districts held by GOP Reps. John Faso, John Katko and Elise Stefanik. Democrats rallied around state Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi (D), who’s mounting a bid against Rep. Claudia Tenney (R).